Strong Voices Conversations With

Product Description Reactions to Alan Twigg's first book of interviews with Canadian authors, For Openers: "For Openers is much the best thing of its kind I've ever read, and much more difficult to achieve than the casual reader would guess. " -Hugh MacLennan "One can appreciate the zest, the engaging lack of stuffiness, with which Twigg confronts his authors." -Ken Adachi, Toronto Star "For Openers is probably the best popular introduction to Canadian Literature that one could own." -Charles Campbell, The Ubyssey About the Author Alan Twigg was the founder and for 33 years editor of BC Book World, Canada's largest-circulating publication about books. He has also been contributing editor of Quill & Quire, Canadian books columnist for the Vancouver Province, books columnist for Vancouver magazine, a contributor of profiles to the Toronto Star and the Writers Union of Canada representative on the board of directors of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing. In 2000, he was the first recipient of the Gray Campbell Distinguished Service Award for outstanding contributions to literature and publishing. In 2015 he received the Order of Canada and in 2016 the BC Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence. In 2022 Simon Fraser University awarded him a Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa, citing his “immense contribution to the promotion of B.C. literature and authors." Alan is the author of twenty books to date including For Openers: Conversations with 24 Canadian Writers, Hubert Evans: The First Ninety-Three Years, Vancouver and Its Writers, Vander Zalm: from Immigrant to Premier, First Invaders: The Literary Origins of British Columbia and Cuba: 101 Top Historical Sites and Out of Hiding: Holocaust Literature of British Columbia (Ronsdale 2022). Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. T: What was your family upbringing like? PURDY: We were lower middle class, I guess you'd call it. My father was a farmer who died of cancer when I was two. My mother moved to town and devoted her life to going to church and bringing me up. I suppose I reacted against religion. But I remember when I rode the freight trains west for the first time, when I was sixteen or seventeen, I got lost in the woods and couldn't get out. So I prayed. I wasn't going to take any chances, no chances at all. T: If a person reacts that way when he's very young, they say he'll react that way again when he's old. PURDY: Christ, I'll never make id I haven't prayed since that time. I doubt if I ever will again. I'm not religious in any formal sense, not in any God sense. T: Do you think riding the freights appealed to you because it put you in touch with your survival juices? PURDY: Well, let me give you the story about the first trip I took. I was hitchhiking north of Sault Ste. Marie when suddenly the Trans-Canada Highway didn't go any further. So I had to catch a train. I waited till after midnight. I got onto a flatcar that had had coal on it. It was raining and so I huddled there, all selfequipped with two tubes of shaving cream and an extra pair of shoes and a waterproof jacket. We went all night into a town called Hawk Junction. I was desperate from the rain. I got out my big hunting knife and tried to get into one of the boxcars. I ripped the seal off one of the cars and tried to open the door but I couldn't do it. So I went back and huddled miserably on the flatcar. I didn't know I was at a divisional point. A cop came along and said, "You can get two years for this." He locked me up in a caboose with bars on the windows. There was a padlock on the outside of the door, which opened inward. Then he came along a couple of hours later and took me home to have lunch with his family. They gave me a Ladies' Homejournal to read. I began to get alarmed. What will my mother think? Two years in jail. The window of the caboose was broken where other people had tried to get out and couldn't do it. But I noticed, as I said, that the door op